Anatomy of a Single Girl

by Snadowsky, Daria

  I never gave it much thought before, but doesn’t everyone make out in the dark? I always did, at least when I was undressed. It just feels less exploitative than with light, which showcases every stray hair my razor missed, those ugly little bumps on my areolas, and the uglier stretch marks I got spring semester from working off the freshman fifteen I packed on in the fall.

  “I guess I just feel … sexier with the lights off.”

  “But you’re gorgeous, Dom!”

  “Thanks,” I say weakly.

  “That’s it. I’m staging an intervention. Don’t wig out.”

  Guy turns the lamp back on but angles the bulb toward the wall so it’s still dim. Then he jumps up out of bed and stands before the full-length mirror hanging on his closet door. He waves his hand for me to follow.

  “Really, Guy. This is unnecessary.”

  “Why don’t you look for just … ten seconds? I’ll even time it. Please?”

  He makes his cute puppy-dog eyes again, and I reason that the quickest way to get out of this is to comply. “Fine,” I drone, throwing off the pillow. “Start counting.”

  “One Mississippi …”

  It feels like déjà vu. Growing up, I’d spend hours naked before my own full-length mirror to monitor how I was developing. But once I got to Tulane last August, I don’t think I ever saw my reflection without at least a towel on. What with having a roommate and sharing a hall bathroom, there was never a chance to. That may be why it’s so easy in college to get fatter without realizing it until your clothes stop fitting. Then after my breakup in December, I avoided looking in mirrors any longer than I had to. I felt so disgusted about losing my boyfriend and gaining the weight that I couldn’t face myself. I wish my ex could see me now, though, because I am pretty fit again. And Guy doesn’t seem repelled by all my imperfections. If anything, in this light we resemble the people on the covers of Amy’s collection of erotica novels, where a bare-chested he-man type stares lustily at a breathy maiden.

  “… ten Mississippi,” Guy finishes, but I don’t move away. Instead I turn to the side to admire my profile. I understand now that the appeal of flings isn’t just that they’re fun—they also build your self-esteem. Nothing makes you get down on yourself and worry that you’re undesirable like rejection, so having someone desirable desire you is the ultimate antidote. And aphrodisiac.

  I spin around to Guy and practically slam his hand against my breast before tumbling with him onto the bed. Soon I let my knees fall open so he can roll on top of me.

  “But we—we can’t do it,” I stammer between kisses. “At least not tonight. Maybe never. I’d like to, but—”

  “It’s okay, Dom. We don’t need it.”

  Then, with nothing but his boxers separating us, he starts slowly rocking against me. It’s so nice, I almost forget to breathe.

  “This cool so far?” he asks while licking my chest.

  I nod as familiar tremors build up inside me that make me writhe and arch my back. “Ohs” and “yeahs” soar from my lips, and the tremors now coalesce into the sensation of a tidal wave building up down there. Guy revs up his speed, and he’s so hard, I’m astounded he hasn’t punctured through his underwear. Finally I wrap my legs around him tightly, coaxing the wave to swell higher, and higher.

  I grab Guy’s pillow again, this time to hold it over my mouth so my voice won’t carry. It doesn’t end up mattering, though, because Guy comes shortly after me and does nothing to muffle his moans, which sound like a savage animal being sacrificed. The priss in me wants to tell his brothers that we didn’t have sex and were only dry-humping. I nearly laugh thinking how funny that would sound: We were only dry-humping!

  “Wow,” Guy says, peeling off his now-drenched boxers and tossing them onto the floor. “It was so hot watching you come.”

  That’s the strangest compliment I’ve ever received. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Normally I can hold off a lot longer, but seeing you lose yourself like that … Man, it drove me wild.” Guy lies back down next to me. “I felt bad last night that I was the only one getting off, so today I’m glad things were ‘equal.’ ” He winks.

  I’m about to tell him something, but I hesitate because it’s really personal. It seems silly, though, holding back with someone when we’re already seeing each other stark naked and at our most vulnerable. I suppose that’s the whole genesis behind pillow talk.

  “You know, Guy, that was actually, um, the first time I’ve ever … come in front of anyone.”

  “Oh, really? Well, I’m glad I was able to make you. I find every woman’s a little different in that way.”

  “Oh, really? And, pray tell, how many ‘women’ are you basing your deduction on?”

  He shrugs. “I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t want me to say anything.”

  “I’m not asking for names, Guy. And I’m entitled to know your sex stats before we go any further.” I jostle his shoulders. “Just tell me. How many girls?”

  “Okay, but define ‘sex.’ Are you talking broadly speaking or standard P in V?”

  “Um … both.”

  “All right. Uh …” He crosses his hands behind his head and thinks for a moment. “Regular sex: five. Oral: I don’t know … Maybe three or four more? And this is all spread out since tenth grade.”

  “You player,” I tease. “Actually, that’s not as many as I would’ve guessed. I thought frat boys were all about getting as much ass as possible.”

  “Well, I have no interest in being with ditzes or bitches, and that really narrows my options, even at Ford.”

  “Aw, poor baby.” I lie on my side and twiddle his chest hair with my fingers. “And in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve done it with only one boy. I used to think I’d hold out until I was married or at least in my twenties, but that all changed senior year.”

  “I would hope. As an anatomy-phile, you should be in on doing it.”

  “I don’t know how ‘in on’ it I am. Before you, I’d never even hooked up with anyone besides my ex, and he’d never been with anyone before, either.”

  “Aha. That’s the reason it was never good with him. The poor dude just didn’t know what he was doing.” He shakes his head dolefully. “I’ve been there.”

  “Neither of us knew what we were doing. I didn’t even figure out how to make myself come until after we split up, and I was just trying to feel something other than the pain.”

  “Day-um! I had whacking off nailed when I was thirteen. You must’ve been happy to finally know what you were missing with him.”

  “Yeah, but I honestly didn’t care about all that when we were going out. You know, I was in love, yada, yada, yada.”

  Guy’s face registers no reaction. After a pause, I ask him something I’ve been curious about since we met. “Have you ever been in love?”

  He sighs. “Well … define ‘love.’ ”

  “Okay, if you have to ask, that’s a no.”

  “Hmm … When I was a freshman in high school, I asked this cute junior in physics club to homecoming, but she said I was too young for her. I had a really bad headache for the rest of the day. Is that close?”

  “Your head hurt for a day? That’s hardly a crush! Love is … needing to be with this one person. No—it’s more like wanting to need to be with this one person. Last semester my English professor read us this great Robert Frost quotation that went something like, ‘Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.’ ”

  His eyebrows bunch. “I think you lost me.”

  “Okay. Your love interest becomes the most important thing to you. And if the love is requited, it’s the biggest high in the universe, and you’d be fine never being with anyone else. But if this person doesn’t want you back, well, you pretty much wish you were dead … or that that person dies miserable.”

  “Um, I think that’d go against the Hippocratic oath, Doc Baylor.”

  “Obviously, you don’t act on those thoughts. It’s just that terrible s
tuff goes through your mind because you’re hurting so badly.”

  “You make love sound like hate.”

  “Well, it can be sometimes. They’re both types of passion, and love can become hate, depending on what your love interest does.”

  “Aren’t you getting love confused with, I don’t know … infatuation?”

  “There’s a thin line there, too. In neuroscience, our textbook showed how the brain scans of people newly in love look a lot like the brain scans of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In each case, your dopamine is suppressing your serotonin.”

  He laughs. “So essentially, love’s a gnarly chemical cocktail that mimics mental illness.”

  “It’s not always dramatic and crazy, though. In the best relationships, everything settles down after a while. And when things are going well, Guy, I swear to you”—I look away from him and stare out his window—“there’s no beating being in love. It’s as if you’re in paradise on Earth … until things go bad.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, but I don’t know if it’s for me. Maybe like how some people can’t be hypnotized, some people can’t fall in love.”

  “Don’t speak too soon.” I look back to him. “Amy used to doubt it’d ever happen to her before she met her boyfriend at Amherst.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, Bruce never would’ve guessed Amy was ‘in love’ last night. I thought she was cool and all, but the guys today were calling her a tease.”

  Like a shot, I sit up and yap, “Oh, really? Then you can pass along this message to them from me.” I clutch Guy’s arm and give him an Indian burn.

  “Ow! Jesus!”

  “You can also say that Amy would never talk shit about them.” I turn away and pull up the blanket. Little does Guy know that I agree with his brothers.

  “Sorry, Dom. I didn’t want you to think Bruce was a dick for making a play for her. He just didn’t know she had a boyfriend. It’s a code of Beta that other dudes’ girlfriends are off-limits.” When I don’t say anything, he hugs me from behind so we’re spooning, which has to be the coziest way to be with a boy. It’s like I’m being cradled. “I didn’t mean to touch a nerve, Dom. Forgive me?”

  “Yeah.… I know Amy gives off a certain vibe, but underneath she’s the most loyal girl I’ve ever met. You just haven’t spent enough time with her.”

  “You’re right … but you don’t mind if I’d rather spend time with you, do you?”

  Powerless to stop my smile, I roll back toward him. “I guess not.”

  “Good, ’cause if you’ll allow me—” He squirrels under the blanket and kisses my belly. Then he slides his mouth south. “I’d like to try to make it up to you.”

  16

  “You sure are smiley, Dom,” Dad observes over lunch the next day on our boat. “So you and that neutron-isolating lab rat had fun?”

  “Oh. Yeah. We ordered up pizza and streamed Saturday Night Live on his computer,” I answer truthfully. Of course I’m omitting everything that happened beforehand, and during the commercials, and afterward until I had to bike home. Mom and Dad aren’t stupid, so I’m sure they suspect there’s more. But although I’m open with them about how I feel about boys, how far I go is my concern, and I’m sure they’re happier not knowing.

  “So things are all right?” he presses. “Before that concert Friday, you hadn’t mentioned him or cracked a smile all week, so I figured he was out of the picture.”

  “That doesn’t matter now. We’re cool.”

  “And you’re sure where he lives is safe? I don’t want to think about all the riffraff in those crack shack frat houses.”

  “Don’t spaz, Dad. There’s hardly anyone there this summer, anyway.”

  “So, I suppose you two are an item now.” Mom sighs in resignation.

  “For your information”—I look pointedly at her—“it’s just until I go back to school.”

  “Oh … I didn’t realize.” She sneaks a glance at Dad. “So you won’t be seeing any other boys until then?”

  “What ‘other boys’? Everyone I meet at the hospital is way too old for me. So as long as I have nothing else going on, it’s either Guy or no one.”

  “Hmm,” Dad directs toward Mom. “That sounds a heck of a lot like the path of least resistance, which has to do with physics, if memory serves.”

  “To me, it’s simple math,” Mom says back at him. “The time you put toward someone who won’t be in your future is the same time lost doing more worthwhile things.”

  “Like meeting other people?” he asks.

  “Yes, or simply pursuing your own interests,” she responds.

  “Good point.” Dad nods pensively while taking a second chicken sandwich. “What do you think, Dom?”

  You have to hand it to my parents for disguising their sermonizing as innocent conversing, but I’m dumbfounded they’re not more relieved that Guy and I aren’t getting serious. Now us not getting serious is a liability, too? Is there any way to keep a boy in my life without it being an issue?

  When I don’t respond, Dad asks, “Why don’t you ask this Guy guy over to dinner sometime? If you’re going to keep running off to see him, we’d be interested in getting a read on him.”

  “Thanks. I don’t know how soon that could happen, though. He works real late.” That’s also not the whole story, but it sounds nicer than explaining that I’d rather be alone with Guy than share our little free time with anyone else. “I’m not even seeing him again until the weekend.”

  “If that’s so,” Mom says, “maybe you’ll finally have an opportunity to start boxing up your room.”

  Both my parents have been bugging me nonstop about this since they broke the Gainesville news last week. I’m still getting used to the idea that we’re leaving here for good and that I need to pack up my whole life. What I dread most is cleaning out my linen closet and risking another breakdown over the ex bag.

  Mom goes on. “Keep in mind, it’s a very big job going through all your belongings. You’ll want to give yourself plenty of time.”

  Then Dad adds, “And since those bloodsucking movers charge by the pound, your mom and I are gonna shed a lot of the old crap we don’t need anymore. You might want to downsize, too.”

  “Of course, don’t throw out anything you don’t want to.”

  “But be selective in case the new place ends up being smaller.”

  “So try not to wait till the last minute, Dommie—”

  “Guys!” I cut them off before they can make me feel any more claustrophobic. “It’s still July, leaving me more than a month, which is plenty of time, especially with me having to be in by one-thirty. For right now, though, I want to enjoy my vacation, okay?”

  They just squint in disapproval before mercifully changing subjects, but even that irritates me, because now they’re critiquing the Rauschenberg Gallery. My first week home my parents and I went there to see a show Amy was curating. As if they are in any position to judge.

  “I never understood that modern art,” Dad states. “And I don’t see how there’s a market for it. It doesn’t look like anything.”

  “It wasn’t my taste, either,” Mom agrees. “Most art’s too subjective for me. I prefer painting by numbers.”

  “Guys, those works were abstract. They’re not supposed to ‘look’ like anything. It’s about what they evoke.”

  “That’s fine,” Dad says, “but the only thing they ‘evoked’ in me is yawns. I could’ve done them.”

  “At least the hors d’oeuvres were good,” Mom concedes.

  The longer I’m away at college, the more naive my parents sound when I return. But what breaks the camel’s back is when they revert to debating whether mahimahi is better steamed or broiled, which I’ve heard them bicker over so many times, I could recite their dialogue by rote. I remember Guy complaining that his parents have become uninteresting, and Amy’s constantly bemoaning how she and Joel are like an “old married couple” in the bad sense. Is this what they meant? I’
m happy my parents still love each other, but suddenly I’m not so sure I’d be happy in their shoes.

  “Don’t you ever get bored?” I blurt out.

  They frown, and Dad says, “Bored? Of what?”

  “I mean … every Sunday you eat the same sandwiches made from the same leftover roast chicken while you talk about the same things that make no difference to the world? I’m just curious—doesn’t it ever get really boring?”

  Without skipping a beat, Dad retorts, “Dominique, all day I ‘make a difference’ keeping criminals off the street while Mom ‘makes a difference’ educating moody teenagers like someone I know. And we’re about to embark on a big life change a lot of folks our age wouldn’t have the guts to go for, so sue us if we like a little sameness in our day.”

  Score, checkmate, and snap, I think while gaping at Dad. I feel bad that I killed any chance of making this a more pleasant boat trip than last week’s, but I’m too proud to apologize. So as they continue talking about the merits of fried catfish, I just chew in silence and go back to pondering what made me “smiley” to begin with: my pro-con list for doing it with Guy.

  The obvious pro is Guy’s experience. Like I implied to him yesterday, sex with my ex-boyfriend was always a little awkward, as if we were fumbling through the motions of what we thought was right but could never be sure. So it’d be a wasted opportunity not to go for it when I’m finally with someone who’s been there, done that, and could teach me a thing or two.

  Another pro—although it’s more of a fringe benefit since I’d never use this as a reason to go all the way—is that having sex would take the focus off oral sex, which I don’t want to do to Guy. After he went down on me last night, he looked really disappointed when I didn’t reciprocate, even though he said it was okay. But when I gave blow jobs to my ex, I secretly hated it. What’s pleasant about sucking on a stiff, veiny appendage that spurts pee and sperm? It made me nearly retch and gave me a neck ache. Come to think of it, hand jobs weren’t very enjoyable, either. And since Guy’s not committing to me, I’m even less inclined to perform any “job” on him.